tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5688572333584836648.post3862246086665542838..comments2017-01-22T04:35:30.854-05:00Comments on A City in Speech: Gratitude to the Unknown InstructorsSebastianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06634050682365973346noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5688572333584836648.post-81452978870524240182016-05-21T02:00:49.874-04:002016-05-21T02:00:49.874-04:00Steve,
That may have been the most intelligent ex...Steve, <br />That may have been the most intelligent explanation of what poetry actually is that I have ever heard. Have you written anything? And may I borrow this definition?Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10601457836573753124noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5688572333584836648.post-77206757115919143642016-04-07T02:34:51.104-04:002016-04-07T02:34:51.104-04:00It's nonsense anyway. Only non-poets write thi...It's nonsense anyway. Only non-poets write this guff. Yeats did that stuff quickly and intuitively. Yes, in some ways those associations are present, but not to the level they assume in your critique. Jump off a bridge and see how much time you have to think about the water rising to meet you. That's what poetry is. It rushes and engulfs. One does the prior work of language, but after that it is something else, like Zen or sex. Only the critics are filled with this dilemma of passionate intensity and conviction.Stevehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16949323084007432054noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5688572333584836648.post-55660516719276096682010-03-18T22:39:01.153-04:002010-03-18T22:39:01.153-04:00Also, I did not mean to ignore the second (and mas...Also, I did not mean to ignore the second (and masterful) paragraph of your question, but I'm intellectually drained at the moment.Sebastianhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06634050682365973346noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5688572333584836648.post-56385135995813265352010-03-18T22:32:15.205-04:002010-03-18T22:32:15.205-04:00I did not mean to suggest that specifically Christ...I did not mean to suggest that specifically Christian salvation history was being evoked, though upon review I see how I could have been read that way. Rather, I was suggesting the invocation of "the dying god hanging upon his tree."<br /><br />May I ask what you mean when you speak of redeeming Yeats' poetics? It would seem that to be redeemed is first to be redeemed <i>from</i> something, and I am not sure what you think has enslaved his poetry.Sebastianhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06634050682365973346noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5688572333584836648.post-78479537495412110602010-03-14T22:13:39.283-04:002010-03-14T22:13:39.283-04:00I hear the "echo of the scaffold" to whi...I hear the "echo of the scaffold" to which you drew attention, but I do not find the phrase "brought to pass" as suggestive as you do, and certainly do not recognize any "passion reference." Besides, as you yourself point out, it is "all things" which are said to hang, and this would seem to put the Creation in the soteriological position of the second person of the Trinity. In any case, I do not believe that an underlying evocation of Christian salvation history can accomplish the redemption of Yeats's poetics.<br /><br />Could you clarify your sense of the relationship between the two statements? There seems to me to be a want of economy and an inhospitable ellipsis between the completion of the undertaking and the use of a universal statement to describe the contingency of that undertaking. If the instruction is an example of all things hanging, anything else might have served just as well, and to apply the statement to the unknown instructors is robbed of any weight by the universal quantification. My sense is that "All things hang" in some way specifies the undertaking. This kind of specification would normally require a colon. The semi-colon promises less in the way of an explanation; the image which follows explains by the pressure of what it does not say clearly. (It is like a refrain which went unheard in its first utterance.)Amos Hunthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00262758674894498892noreply@blogger.com